Fame
& Fortune: Comedian Al Franken
Laughing to the bank
and (maybe) the Senate | | |
| My
wife looks at it as a very dangerous thing. She looks at it like I was in Atlantic
City and won a lot of money at blackjack and caught the gambling bug and I'm going
to turn into Bill Bennett. Her take was, "This is bad." No, it's good!
Look! We made money!
Bankrate: Your
family must have wondered how you could come out of Harvard and go into comedy. Franken:
I've got to give my parents credit; my dad didn't graduate high school, my mom
didn't go to college, they emphasized education, education, education when we
were kids. My brother Owen, the first in the family to go to college, goes to
MIT. Five years later, I go to Harvard. He graduates from MIT in physics and is
so alienated from physics because so much of it is being used for killing people
that he becomes a photojournalist. Then I go to Harvard and I tell them I'm going
to be a comedian. And you'd expect that these people who so emphasized education
as a way to get up and get out would go, "What did we do wrong?" But
they didn't. To their eternal credit, they were very supportive; they didn't blink
an eye. Bankrate: Did you endure
the usual years of macaroni and cheese? Franken:
No, I was very lucky, I had two lean years and then "Saturday Night
Live." The first year wasn't exactly a bad year for Tom (Davis) and I; we
split $500 a week at first because, as apprentice writers, the Writers Guild allowed
us to be considered one person (laughs). It didn't bode ill for the partnership,
and even so, we were thrilled because we were working. I could pay my rent and
actually go to a restaurant, and that's all I really cared about. We started getting
actual money in around the third year, but it was never that much money in the
first five years, ever. By the end of the first five years, it was maybe like
being a doctor (laughs). Bankrate: Did
you have any doubts you would make it in comedy? Franken:
I've had some dark nights of despair where I've thought, "Maybe I'm not funny
anymore? Maybe I should have done something else?" But no, that's gone. I'm
too old now. Bankrate: You've been
particularly successful at pointing out the absurdities of political figures.
Are you ever afraid that politicians will stop giving you so much material with
which to work? Franken: I'm not
worried. (Laughs) Really. Honest. | 
